My dear & lovely friend, HELLO!

I was thrilled to run into you at the store the other day. I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to visit with you…life can be so rushed with the holidays! So in this new year, I decided to sit down and write you a letter in a calm moment. I know you were surprised when you saw me. You said I looked great, asking me what I’ve been doing, and I told you that I’d started eating differently and working out more. It sounds simple. And actually, it is that simple. But it’s not necessarily been easy. However, you and I both know that rarely are the things that are worth having easy to attain.

Eating less? Is losing weight really that simple? Yes, it really is. I workout so my muscles can show through after I’ve kicked the fat to the curb. I do these things day in and day out. There’s no magic formula. And I don’t use exercise to offset eating too much. I exercise so my body is stronger and leaner and has definition.

Expectations have consequences

Really, though, of all the changes I’ve made the biggest one, it’s been in how I think. Along the way I realized something: Expectations have consequences. Have you ever noticed when someone has a certain expectation of you, you tend to live up to it?

I remember when I was a kid, my parents expected my sister and I to make dinner a few nights a week when they had to work late. Mom left all the ingredients in the fridge and the recipe that we would carefully read and follow. By the time our parents arrived home from work, we had dinner in the oven, ready to eat, with the table set. My sister was 10 and I was 6 years old. It was expected of us, so we did it.

It works the other way around, too. If someone has low expectations of you, you tend to live down to those. When it’s come to my body, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I’ve carried pretty low expectations. I’ve expected I would always be overweight, and historically, I always have been. Expectations are pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I found the Venus Index, I’d been looking for months for something, ANYTHING, to get me on the road to being healthier. When I read the materials, it was the simplicity of the program that constituted its brilliance. And it blew me away. The way in which the innovators of the program were able to take commonly pervasive health myths and categorically annihilate them also helped.

Whether you think you CAN or you CAN’T,  you are RIGHT!

Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” When I dove into the program materials and then into the online community, I knew not only that I could reach my goals, but that I will. That’s a big claim. But I’m ok with that. Why? Because knowing I can makes me right.

You know probably better than anyone else the victories and failures I’ve lived. You know how much my history has made me who I am today. It’s the same for all of us, you know? I see it over and over with the incredible women I’ve met on Venus.

The histories of women, they are often histories that encompass loss. It is the condition of being human…losing children in a custody battle, losing loved ones to illness, losing a job…death, divorce, depression…bankruptcies, foreclosures, repossessions. These are women who were foster kids, adopted, abandoned. They are women who survived beatings. They are women who escaped with their lives. They are women who ran and never looked back.

But more importantly, they are women who came to Venus and learned how to be fighters. They fought for themselves. They gained a sense of worth. They learned how to trust their bodies. They learned they CAN.

The confident and passionate woman

I don’t mean to make it sound as though the women of Venus are all suffering! They aren’t. But you know me, I like understanding foundations. So in getting to know the bits and pieces of many of these women’s lives, it’s become apparent that we all carry something in our history that we could use to lower our expectation of success. We all have something that could hold us back if we let it.

But on Venus, I find the exact opposite! These are women, who in spite of current or past circumstances, they are vested in their own success. All of us have found on Venus we can do what we never thought we could before. Because of that, we are confident, and passionate about crusading a lifestyle that allows us to attain and maintain the healthy body we’ve always wanted.

So that’s the long answer to your question about what I’ve been doing. I do sincerely hope this letter finds you well! I miss our late nights, sipping tea and talking into the wee hours. Hugs to you, sweet lady! Here’s to 2016 and keeping our expectations and their consequences in the realm of “We can do it!”

~ Anea